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Good day today! Managed to get through both Hall 1 and 2 and picked up some good buys along the way. Favourite purchases were Century: A New World for £25 (which was also the last copy at the particular store I got it from) and Gunkimono for £20.

Was trying to find a Res Arcana but seems that sold out fairly quickly.

As for the expo, good layout again, never felt too crowded (though that may change tomorrow) Roll & writes are definitely a big deal this year.

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The 2 things I enjoyed demoing the most were Chronicles of Crime and Ticket to Ride: London.

CoC is a detective game that has you using an app to search crime scenes / interrogate witnesses, etc. It works very well.

TTR:L is TTR done in 15 minutes, which is great, in my book (quite similar to TTR: New York if you've played that).

Edit: Also, Klask! What a great little dexterity game. You control a pawn each using magnets to hit a ball into your opponents goal. But you also have a couple of other ways to score, like whacking some small magnets at your opponents pawn. Good fun.

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Just got back. I'm going to be really achey tomorrow after hauling back my stash. I'll post more tomorrow, but for now just to say if anyone is after Rise of Queensdale English version it's available on the Ravensberger stand. I sung it's praise, naturally.

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After day 1, has anybody got any recommendations for stuff to demo tomorrow?

Highlight of the event for me was play testing Tony (Snowdonia) Boydell’s new work in progress, Attention All Shipping!, with Tony Boydell. Lovely game that is essentially a game based around the shipping forecast! Fish, trade, repair lighthouses, enhance your boat, sing sea-shanties (literally) and a ton of side quests.

Among all the bijillion pound Kickstarter mega-boxes and cash-in IP, it was a breath of fresh salty sea air.

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@donpeartree There were lots of people playing Star Wars: Outer Rim and looking as though they were having a great time. Meanwhile the X-Wing tables were pretty empty. Ended up getting a copy off the back of the hype.

Also the Awaken Realms stall were playing Tainted Grail, which looks gorgeous, and plays very well too.

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What else did you buy? What did you all buy? What gems have you discovered?

This is my little haul. Please note the homemade Quest Map.

I loved the bring and buy more than the main sellers. So much great out of print stuff. I was really after the 80s Judge Dredd or Rogue Trooper games. They had Dredd but the box was fucked, so picked up Chainsaw Warrior for £10 instead. Basically 2000AD Solitaire, solo-play, with some great art by Brett Ewins.

Kickstarter Grimm Forest for £30 was a fantastic find. Nearly got Arkham Horror for £20, but the contents were a mess.

My best buy for pure nostalgia and obscure as fuck shits’n’giggles was the Cyberpunk 2020 bundle of three horror expansion titles: Dark Metropolis, Grimm’s Cybertales and Nights Edge, all for £10.

Star Wars: Outer Rim was my only non-bring and buy purchase. That was £42 from Chaos Cards after I haggled them down a bit. Chaos were generally cheapest, but a few things were cheaper elsewhere. Nearly went for Armada at £64, but Outer Rim seems much more accessible.

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For anyone rocking up later, there are additional ticket booths outside halls 2 and 3. Worth checking before you entire the swamp that is the Hall 1 queue.

If anyone is coming today you can also get tickets from the library room in the Hilton.

Half my bring and buy sales have gone. Was very restrained yesterday and only picked up the new Keyforge starter set, Quartermaster General Cold War and Kanban. I honestly struggled to find games I wanted to buy. Ridiculous but true! I know too many people who buy all the games so try not to duplicate unless it’s something I really like.

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Bosk - place trees, score, blow leaves, score. I enjoyed it, but I think it should be renamed Tree Chess.

House Of Danger - the Z-Man Games COYA board game. It failed to be as engaging as Escape The Dark Castle, has none of that games randomness or replayability, and I just don't get why I should drop £20 on this over a collection of COYA books. They've not made enough of a 'game' from it, unfortunately.

Sorcerer - it was ok, I guess. Just felt like all the other card games of its ilk, but with artwork that made me feel a bit ill for some reason.

Back on Sunday to try some more stuff. Really fancy Chronicles of Crime, would love to try Dice Hospital and expect to spend time in the family zone.

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Bosk - place trees, score, blow leaves, score. I enjoyed it, but I think it should be renamed Tree Chess.

House Of Danger - the Z-Man Games COYA board game. It failed to be as engaging as Escape The Dark Castle, has none of that games randomness or replayability, and I just don't get why I should drop £20 on this over a collection of COYA books. They've not made enough of a 'game' from it, unfortunately.

Sorcerer - it was ok, I guess. Just felt like all the other card games of its ilk, but with artwork that made me feel a bit ill for some reason.

Back on Sunday to try some more stuff. Really fancy Chronicles of Crime, would love to try Dice Hospital and expect to spend time in the family zone.

Pele and I went together (along with @moosegrinder) so we demoed the same stuff. I really enjoyed Bosk, it starts as a lovely object-placement game and ends as an area control game where you can also place a squirrel that is considered Better Than All Other Items. Would definitely recommend giving it a go - it's on the same stall as Sagrada. The only reason I didn't buy is because I tend to play in two-player, whereas we demoed as a four, and it felt like it really shone with that number.

House of Danger is the most delightful nostalgia trip, but as a game it is pretty ropey. It makes very little sense, as choose your own adventure books tend not to; it isn't much of a game, simply adding in a few dice rolls, and it even has a virtual stick-your-thumb-in-the-page mechanic where when your face gets bitten off, you just lose some points and go back to the last card. Go and look at Escape the Dark Sector instead or read a book whilst punching yourself in the face at random intervals.

Sorcerer is from White Wizard, who are responsible for Star Realms and Hero Realms, two straightforward and excellent deckbuilders. Sorcerer, on the other hand, is a pretty complicated battle game about taking control of three areas of London with a pre-built deck consisting of three factions that you pick before beginning the game. There seems to be a decent amount of depth and variety based on how you build your deck - my deck revolved interfering with the opponent's creatures and playing stuff from the graveyard, whereas Pele's deck focused on stealing cards from your opponent and using them as attack buffs.

Wasn't a massive fan of having to use dice to determine success in combat - we were both on the wrong end of a shit die roll but I am exceptionally grumpy about playing well and then losing to a bad roll. There's a decent amount of interplay - each player gets to take six actions per turn and combat is resolved after the action phase, so you can wind up turning the tide in a couple of actions which means you've got to keep an eye on what your opponent is doing before doing low-impact stuff.

I'd personally rather play Magic, but could totally see this being an excellent, interactive and complex game for people who don't already have something like it in their collection (Netrunner, etc).

The Bring and Buy was a bit of a nightmare - found a couple of small things in there to take a punt on, but after waiting for 20 minutes to get in, 30 minutes foraging through the games for the stuff that I really wanted (none of which I found), I wasn't desperate to queue for another 20 minutes to pay. Eventually came home with a Hero Realms campaign deck, a copy of Doppelt So Clever (which is brilliant, but looks utterly incomprehensible at first glance), and Rhino Hero for the kids.

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My two pieces of loot were the first Roll for the Galaxy expansion (which we didn't know existed) and DC Deck Building Game Forever Evil for £20 so I was happy. I was on the lookout for some Resident Evil expansions but the bring and buy was really disappointing. Lots of the same shit priced close enough to show floor price to make it not worthwhile.

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I saw it on twitter, and while UKGE have reacted well it’s properly awful. I suspect realistically there’s nothing that can be done more than kick him out and ban him, as they’ve done, but you’d hope they can sue him for the damage to their reputation that they’ve suffered from him acting like a twat.